Yes, your Eyewitness knows that flour price has gone up…along with everything else. Excepting maybe mini-bus fares. Yesterday, your Eyewitness had to get from point A to point B some 10 miles away, and was shocked when he was told by the mini bus driver that it cost him $140. Just two hours before, he’d taken a taxi from point B to point A, and the driver had hit him for $1700!! “Gas price gaan up,” was the laconic riposte to my arched eyebrows and pained expression!
Obviously, there’s been a ripple effect in every country in the world – and we can now appreciate (if that’s the word!) this thing called “globalisation”! Another effect that was pointed out by yours truly was the US making nice with that tyrant next door, Maduro. Now, some may ask why does the US need Venezuelan oil when we’re already cranking up production with FPSOs dropping anchor and sucking out oil as fast as you can say “Aloo Ball”! Well, the reason is that oil isn’t oil sometimes!! There’s light oil (which we produce) and heavy oil (which Venezuela produces). The former distills into gas to be pumped into your cars, while the latter gives diesel and other oils used for generators and such like! Which America needs, since, “for environmental reasons”, they abandoned the Canadian Tar Sands that would’ve given them heavy oils!
So, the Americans rushed their negotiators down to Caracas, made gooey eyes at Maduro – who they’d denounced as the greatest threat to American interests in the hemisphere since Castro – and immediately, two American hostages were freed. And now the quid pro quo proceeds as in a carefully choreographed tango!! We just learnt that us big oil Chevron’s mustering staff and equipment to re-enter Venezuela to expand Venezuelan PDVSA’s emaciated production.
In the meantime, we also learn that the US have vetoed the IDB loan to expand a private shore base here – virtuously averring they don’t want to fund fossil fuel production!! Just for the record, heavy oil is significantly more polluting than light oil!! Go figure! Maybe because this is war…and war is hell?? The bottom line for us is that Maduro’s hand is being strengthened both against the Americans and, more importantly, against us.
But sadly, the Western sanctions are affecting the West more than the Ruskies. After all, don’t forget that it’s only America that has banned gas and oil exports from Russia. With the Russian economy already quite diversified, the sanctions will force them to become more self-sufficient, even as they make up shortfalls from China and elsewhere.
Even Saudi Arabia has joined Russia in using the Chinese Yuan for trade!
…from Kanye West
Surely, dear reader, you heard that Kanye West – who modestly wants to be referred to simply as “Ye” – has called for “Black History Month” to be abandoned in favour of “Black Future Month”? He’s even launched a movement to institute this shift. Now, you may say he’s “just a rap star” – but even there, he’s a US$1.8 billion rap star!! Kanye’s notion is that there’s been enough talk about slavery and the sundry other horrors of the past, and he feels that Blacks should be future-oriented.
But he’s faced some blowback. After the very hip Princeton, Yale, Harvard ex-professor Cornell West (no relation) heard of the suggestion, he said of Kanye, “Every performance is the authorising of a future in the midst of the present, trying to recover the best of the past. Past, present, and future, they all go together. So Kanye thinks he can have Black Future Month without having a Black History Month.
“Tell that brother to get off the symbolic crack pipe!!”
…in Guyana?
So, the question is – since most of our woke brethren and sistren take their cues from the US – which West should be followed, Ye or Cornell?
With us, of course, maybe it’s a concrete question of reparations versus oil riches?
